Getting the best out of people - ISO 10018 aids ISO 9001 implementation

by Peter Merrill on
15 November 2012

ISO
10018:2012, Quality management – Guidelines on people involvement and competence,
a new ISO standard
for organizations of all sizes, types and activities, provides a framework for getting the best out
of people in the implementation of a quality management system based on ISO 9001:2008, Quality
management
systems – Requirements. It is designed to be a useful tool for leaders, managers, supervisors,
quality
practitioners, quality management representatives and human resource managers, and can also be used
with other management system standards.

The new International Standard was developed
by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 176, Quality management and quality assurance,
subcommittee SC 3,
Supporting technologies, through its working group WG 15, Guidelines
for participation and competence
of people.

Importance of people

WG15 concluded that based on the eight
quality management principles from which the ISO 9000 family is developed, the people aspects of quality
management systems needed to be addressed more strongly.

The ISO 9001 principle
Involvement
of people states : “People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement
enables their abilities to be used for the organization’s benefit”. This links with the Leadership
principle, which states: “Leaders establish unity of purpose and direction of the organization. They
should create and maintain the internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving
the organization’s objectives”.

Figure 1: The people involvement and competence process.

In
response, the working group has developed
a process
for encouraging people involvement and competence. It also reviewed each element of ISO 9001, identified
typical management system problems that can occur through lack of people involvement, and specified
actions to overcome those problems.

Content and key definitions

Two
of
the key definitions in ISO 10018, central to its title, are :

3.1
Competence,
defined as
the “ability to apply knowledge and skills to achieve intended results”3.5
Involvement,
defined as “engaging in and contributing to shared objectives”

The contents
of ISO
10018 follow the structure of ISO 9001 with the exception of Clause 4 : Management of
people involvement
and competence, and include :

In
addition, it contains
Annex A : Human factors that impact the quality management system, and Annex B :
Self-assessment.

Clause
4 : Management of people involvement and competence

Clause 4 describes
the processes
an organization can use to implement and maintain people involvement and competence in quality management
systems (see Figure 1). It also describes how leaders should encourage people
to assume responsibilities,
and create the conditions that enable them to achieve desired results.

The
process is
based on four steps :

4.4 Analysis : data are collected
and analyzed to establish an organization’s
short- and long-term objectives for people involvement and competence4.5 Planning :
procedures
are created to plan the people involvement and competence acquisition process at an organizational,
group and individual level4.6 Implementation : the plans
and actions are implemented to
achieve the objectives4.7 Evaluation : plans, actions
and outcomes are evaluated to identify
opportunities for improvement.

Subclause 4.6 describes general leadership actions
to
enhance people involvement, and how that is best achieved in an environment in which people participate
in planning and influencing decisions and actions that affect their jobs.

Figure 2: Human factors in people involvement and competence.

The
people
involvement process includes a number of human factors :

Communication :
integrates people
and promotes shared understanding

Recruitment : the process
of sourcing, screening, and
selecting people for a position in an organization

Awareness :
once communication is
established, people should be made aware that ISO 9001 requires an organization to maintain a quality
management system

Engagement : employer engagement is the organization’s
commitment to
improving the partnership and developing shared understanding between people and their managers

Teamwork
and collaboration : occurs when people work together for a common goal

Responsibility
and authority : managers should be responsible for providing people with the authority to make
decisions
about their work

Creativity and innovation : success results
from a high degree of creativity.
Enabling creativity creates a higher sense of personal fulfilment and consequently enhances involvement

Recognition
and rewards : the organization should recognize actions that improve people involvement

The
guidelines in Clauses 5 to 8 provide the specific actions to meet individual quality management system
requirements, such as those specified in ISO 9001. Some of these actions are shown below

Clause
5 : Management responsibility

Clause 5 recommends that top management
explain to the
people in the organization the value created by the quality management system, the importance of customer
satisfaction, and the relationship between quality policy, business plans and individual roles. Managers
should involve people in setting objectives and, in preparing the management review, should establish
involvement and competence objectives and communicate these to the organization.

Clause
6 : Resource management

Clause 6 addresses human resources, and advises
that human resource
planning should be strategic (long term) and tactical (short term), and include a recruitment and selection
process. That process should be transparent to candidates, and emphasize the importance of their competence.
The clause also refers back to the competence acquisition process described in Clause 4.

Clause
7 : Product realization

Clause 7 guidelines require that those responsible
for product
realization and service delivery understand customer needs and expectations, as well as product requirements.
Meetings addressing complaints should involve people in departments affected by the complaint.

Clause
8 : Measurement, analysis and improvement

Clause 8 states that when people
from all business
functions are engaged on the audit team, that team is seen as representative of the entire organization.
It advises that those being interviewed during an audit should be made aware that the audit involves
assessing the process and not the person.

Annex A

Annex
A describes in
more detail the factors that impact on people involvement and competence, as previously listed in 4.6.
and explains why each is important, and outlines the benefits gained from their implementation. Table
1 shows the full list of these human factors.

Following are extracts from several
key
factors :

Awareness : leaders should ensure that
people in the organization understand
the purpose of the quality management system, and their role in the system. They should be involved
at all stages of identifying the process and controls they work with, and be aware of their process
responsibilities

Communication : effective communication is
necessary for people inside
and outside the organization, to ensure they work with common objectives. As organizations grow and
become more complex, communication becomes more difficult

Creativity
and innovation :
creativity and innovation inside the organization enables the improvement of existing processes and
products, and the creation of new products and services for the market

Education
and
learning : the learning organization focuses on increasing knowledge to continually increase its
performance.
Organizations must be competent to be competitive

Empowerment :
Empowerment enables people
to take responsibility for their work and its results

Engagement :
When people are fully
engaged in the organization’s activities they experience more personal fulfilment, and the organization
consequently conducts its activities more effectively. Engagement is the outcome of effective recruitment
followed by introduction to the workforce through an awareness process.

Annex
B

The
guidance in Clauses 5 to 8 can be used as a checklist to assess people involvement and competence in
an organization. Annex B provides a rapid high-level guideline for self-assessment.

A
better framework

Although there is a body of knowledge available that
seeks to address
the people need, it is not in a form readily accessible to users of ISO standards and is often hard
to find and difficult to link. However, ISO 10018 can help by providing global guidance on what knowledge
to use when implementing ISO 9001, and the link between the quality management standard and people involvement.
It enables multinational organizations to develop a more consistent business culture with a common quality
management language, and a better framework for global communication.

People
involvement
is a prevention-based activity investing in training, teamwork and communications. Although it may be
perceived as a cost, people involvement is actually a shift in time allocation from correction to prevention.

Following
ISO 9001 certification – and with an excellence mindset among a broader group of people as a result
of ISO 10018 implementation – organizations can then progress more rapidly to continual improvement.
An easier transition from ISO 9001 to excellence models and awards can also be expected.

Peter Merrill

Peter Merrill

Convenor ISO/TC 176/SC 3/WG 15

Peter Merrill is Convenor of ISO technical committee ISO/TC
176, Quality management and quality assurance, subcommittee SC 3, Supporting
technologies, working group WG 15, Guidelines for participation and competence
of people – the developers of ISO 10018:2012, and is also a member of the Strategic Advisory Group
of ISO/TC 176 and Liaison with TC 260, Human resources. Mr. Merrill is a conference keynote speaker
and author of Innovation Generation and Do it Right the Second Time.